Old Ironsides’ Cannons

The USS Constitution is the nation’s oldest commissioned warship that’s still afloat.
While admittedly a bit of a tourist magnet, the ship is soaked in history (and whatever else happens to be floating around).
One of those bits of history is that the ship fires a cannon at 8am and at sunset.
Now, some of the nearby neighbors are complaining, and want to either have the firing stopped or the charges reduced. While I can see their point (( My apartment complex has gardeners come by with gas-powered leaf blowers every weekend at 7am and they love to sit outside my window with the motors running. )), the ship has been there for longer than they have, and while they can ask that the ship accommodate their wishes (free speech and all), they have no real standing; the ship was there first.
As a commenter on Fark said, “Perhaps they should stop firing blanks.”

3 thoughts on “Old Ironsides’ Cannons”

Heh, I’m on board with the Fark commenter. If it’s been happening since 1798, it’s not like they didn’t know about this when they bought the condos. But when I got to the part where they were also complaining about the national anthem, well, at that point, just fire real cannons into their living rooms and see if they bitch after that.

Bitter: Amusingly enough, one of the options in the poll (“Should the guns be silenced?”) on that site is “Fire on the condos, that will end the debate”. That option is leading “Never! Traditions must be preserved” by 2%.

?Should the guns be silenced?? It might make for an interesting campaign to promote suppressors. The scenario is not that unlike the age old tale of cheap property near the airport. It’s hard to feel sympathetic in a case like that.